Traditional family fun on a Sunday

Growing up we always spent Sunday going for a walk (often with a pit stop at a classic country pub) before returning home to a beautiful roast dinner.

Well, there’s no country pubs nearby (sigh!), but there is plenty of nature. One of our favourite places for a walk is Karori Wildlife Sanctuary. With the 34km of walking track we never tire of the ever-changing scenery. And, with the girls building up great muscle power in their pins we are now able to explore further. On Sunday, we enjoyed a fabulous two hour’s walk with no encouragement needed (in fact it was, for the first time, us oldies that were being encouraged to move faster!). The girls raced on ahead, stopping to explore the native flora and fauna and delighting in all the amazing educational signs displayed amongst the sanctuary.

There is so much to see and do. On this visit we started at the heritage area, where we imagined ourselves as early explorers, before visiting the native lizards and green geckos. Then we made a stop at ‘Birdsong Gully’ to reacquaint ourselves to the native bird calls of the Sanctuary. With our senses alert and our ears to attention we proceeded along the ‘Pontoon Walkway’ to the wetland and native fish display. We stopped here for a while to watch the numerous dragon flies dancing and skimming the water.

Then we enjoyed a peaceful meander, alongside a running stream, to the Kaka feeding stations. We delighted in seeing several Kakas and one swept low in flight over our heads as we walked on to the upper dam. On a previous visit we captured the Kaka having a feeding frenzy on video – click here!

From the upper dam we continued uphill to the ‘Discovery Area and Viewing Tower’. From the tower we got a bird’s eye view over the forest canopy.

On our return walk we ventured across the new swing bridge and took time to see the amazing Tuatara before heading up to the Morning Star Goldmine and its resident Cave Weta!

Before entering the Goldmine we donned helmets (terribly smelly!) and were handed two torches. The girls walked in ahead of us eagerly on the look out for gold! They saw a couple of drawing pins and got very excited (the pins are actually markers to where weta have been spotted!). As we reached the end of the cave and looked up to the glimmer of light we gingerly looked for weta – but not too diligently! We didn’t see any (but probably didn’t look terribly hard and didn’t linger long enough!), but we did see a few glow worms and the girls enjoyed the experience.

After a wonderful time exploring we headed home to a beautiful, and much appreciated, roast dinner. Surprisingly Charli was still full of beans and went off for an early evening swim with Dan!

Some previous visits:
May, 2007
Feb. 2008